Ant Financial-backed mobile payment firm Mynt seeks Philippine bank partners to grow microloans business
- The fintech firm wants to open its mobile wallet platform to banks and enlist them to its microloans service
Mynt, the Philippine mobile payment operator part-owned by Ant Financial, is expanding its microloans offering by opening up its platform to bank partners.
The move aims to use the risk-management capability of its Chinese shareholder to diversify into the internet finance marketplace.
Mynt’s chief executive, Anthony Thomas, said the purchase of a 45 per cent stake by Ant Financial last year has equipped the Manila-based firm with the ability to seek out new revenue sources away from the mobile payment and remittance services run by its licensed operating arm, GCash.
Thomas said GCash has had discussions with banks in the Philippines about potentially inviting them to also become lenders on the GCash platform.
Launched in April, GCredit is a credit line available to users of the GCash e-wallet app, giving them an additional balance that can be spent on paying bills and shopping offline. Users are required to repay the credit, at a maximum interest rate of 5 per cent, within 15 days of the billing date.
“We want to increase our cooperation with banks. Ultimately, I don’t believe that Mynt has to be the only lender for GCredit, but GCash can be more of a marketplace on which other lenders could also [provide credit lines],” said Thomas.